Inside the Mind
by The Slinkster
Summary: Andy's thoughts throughout the series...


Title: Inside the Mind

Author: The Slinkster

Rating: K+ (?)

Summary: Andy's thoughts throughout the series and past the point of canon now.

Spoilers: Follows the series, so you need that knowledge to understand what's going on...

Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine

Author's Note: Once again, thanks to Surreallis. Without her, this would have sat on my hard drive collecting virtual dust. Go read her stuff, people, it's way better than mine! This wrote itself WAY out of the control. My original thought was to write a short fic about how Andy has a wall built up around herself...and then it turned into this...

When she was a kid she spent a lot of time at her friends' houses. A latchkey kid, with a mother who decided she wanted other things and a cop father who had started drinking a little too much at night.

Elizabeth Tulley had been her best friend in middle school. During the summer she was thirteen Andy barely spent any time at home, always running around with Lizzy and her family. Andy always thought they were more like sisters. Sisters who were best friends.

So when Lizzy's mom asked, jokingly, one day if they weren't sick of each other yet and Lizzy said that she was, Andy was shocked and hurt. When it was evident that Andy hadn't felt the same, Lizzy tried to back track and say she was joking, but Andy knew the truth. She wasn't wanted there anymore.

The last day she spent at Lizzy's house taught her a valuable lesson as a child: never get too close to someone. They'll end up hurting you in the long run.

Years later, she's at the police academy. Her childhood lesson has stuck with her and has (mostly) led her in the right direction. The people she meets usually stay acquaintances, class friends in school, and work friends. She hasn't really considered anyone a true _friend_ since Lizzy Tulley. If she sits at home on Friday nights and doesn't hang pictures in her house, well, that just means she isn't too attached to anyone or anything and leaving will never be a problem.

Traci Nash gets under her skin. In a good way, but Andy still has trouble not fighting it. Traci's a rising star at the academy; the instructors like her and she gets along well with pretty much everyone. Especially, Detective Jerry whatshisname. She notices the way he pays special attention to Nash, touches her under the guise of "instruction." Andy doesn't mention it, nor does she have a problem with it. Lord knows she doesn't need to be making waves with her lineage in the force.

They go out for drinks after class one day. Andy says yes after the sixth time Traci asks.

"So, McNally, what's your story?" She asks over their first beer.

"Not much to tell, really. Dad was a cop, mom ran out, figured being a cop seemed like a good idea." Short, to the point, no room for more questions.

One beer. She figures she'll stay for one beer and then beg off for the night. They have to be in early, she'll say.

Four beers and two hours later, she's telling Traci more about herself then she meant to. Traci has a way of making you feel comfortable, making you trust her. _She'll be a good interrogator,_ she thinks.

Traci has a son, Leo, and Andy is amazed she's able to juggle the training and care for a six year old. Traci's mother helps out a lot, she learns.

One beer after that Traci says, "Look, I know you don't trust people easily, or at all, but you can trust me. Just like I know I can trust you."

"How do you know that? You don't even know me." A simple question. A sad fact.

"We all have our thing. My thing is reading people. I can tell that you are just protecting yourself. I'm not going to ask what happened to make you so cautious, I'm just letting you know that I'm here…if you ever want to talk, or you know…get drunk and complain about guys."

The night ends four hours after it started and Andy leaves the bar with a new friend. She thinks maybe she can start being strong enough on her own to let people in.

When she arrests Sam Swarek and blows his cover, Traci is there with a pitcher of beer and a sympathetic ear.

"Hey," she says, "we're rookies…we're supposed to make mistakes. But, I have to say that was a big one, pal." She doesn't sugarcoat things.

Luke is special. She knows this because they make out in front of a murder house and it's not weird. She tells Traci and they laugh about it.

It moves fast with Luke, but not so much that she's alarmed. It feels right. And if Swarek gives her shit about dating a detective, she doesn't let it show that it affects her. Only, it does, because his opinion seems to matter so much more than others' and she doesn't really know why.

She feels like she's always trying to make up for blowing his cover. It's irritating. He's irritating.

She kills a man and Luke wants to go work a crime scene.

"This case is big," he says by way of explanation. And as an after-thought, "Let me give you a ride home. It's only fifteen minutes."

_Out of the way_, she adds mentally.

She declines, tells him she's tired and she's just going to go home and sleep. She walks away. He tells her that he'll call with what they find. It's a big case.

The adrenaline is wearing off and her hands shake as she gets ready to leave. Her heart races and she's trying to control her breathing. Sam walks in, tells her about Oliver and the burger demand, and she calms down. He has a way of making things okay….even if they're not.

"How ya doing?" He asks like he actually cares. Like he wants to know the truth, he has nowhere else to be. Unlike Luke.

She's fine. But she starts to think about going home - empty apartment, no lights, blank walls – and she starts to shake again. She grabs the bench so he won't notice. _Never let them see you cry_, her dad used to say. _Never show weakness_.

He tells her she did everything right, she trusted her gut. Tells her to call him if she changes her mind about talking. It's what she thinks about while she walks home.

She makes it to her couch before the tears start. She feels upside down, inside out. It was kill or be killed, she knows this but it doesn't help. So she cries. For herself, for the victims, for Oliver, for the man she shot. She thinks that if she can cry herself dry now, then she can pick up her gun tomorrow and look down the sights and pull the trigger.

Her empty apartment echoes back the sound of her sobs and she suddenly has to get out. Go. Run. So she starts walking. Running.

She tells herself her she doesn't know where she's going, but when she ends up at his door she's not surprised. When she knocks, she wonders if he's alone. She realizes she doesn't know that about him. If he has someone.

But when he opens the door, she doesn't hear anyone. She asks anyway, just to be sure.

"You wanna talk?" And no, no she doesn't want to talk.

She pushes him against the wall and fits her mouth to his. He's surprised at first, but then he responds. He kisses like she thought he would, not one part of his body is passive. He is overwhelming. She revels in it.

His arms go around her and lift. They end up in his room, on his bed, and she thinks _he's perfect_. Shirts are removed, skin touches skin, hips thrust. They move like they've been doing this forever, and she tries not to think how uncoordinated it was with Luke the first time. Tries not to compare.

Reality comes rushing back with the sounds and lights of his apartment. It clears her head. He gets up to turn off a few things and her phone rings. Luke. She ignores it.

She glances up as Sam turns a corner, notices the way the muscles of his back play under his skin. She wishes the darkness had lasted a little longer. She wants to touch.

Traci tells her to put Sam on ice and focus on her relationship with Luke. She hangs a picture, they drink wine, they laugh. And she decides to be the girlfriend of the year. She tries not to notice the little tweak of her heart as she closes the freezer with the jar inside.

_It's right_, she tells herself, _Luke is right._

She goes undercover as Sam's girlfriend.

As she gets ready, she tells herself it's not a big deal. Tells herself that she's excited to go undercover, that she's not excited to play his girlfriend. It's just a job. Fake.

He wears an earring in his left ear and carries a revolver, uses too much gel in his hair. She tries to look cheap and pretend she can dance a pole. They are Gabe and Eddy. Drug dealer and Stripper.

She tells him she feels like she's always faking it. He tells her there's no one he'd rather do this with. He tells her to trust him. She does.

They play well together. She tells Angel they met while she was dancing, that she fell for him, and he buys it. They're the perfect criminal couple. But something is wrong. The product isn't there and they are getting separated. She has to stay with the low life wannabe while Sam goes to get the drugs at some unknown location.

He kisses her goodbye, she wipes her gloss off his lip. She doesn't think about the blackout, doesn't think about lost moments and last chances.

When they pull up to the building all she sees is the yellow tarp. _Sam…no_.

She's walking towards the body as Boyd lifts the edge. Angel. Her breath leaves her body in a rush.

"McNally." She turns and he's there. Alive. Whole. She tries not to look as relieved as she feels.

He tells her she doesn't have to fake it anymore, calls her a copper. And she feels like she can finally stop trying to fix the all the mistakes she's made in the past.

She gets shot. The pain spreads like fire across her torso through her vest. She can't breathe and there's a loud ringing in her ears. When the pain subsides enough to let her vision return, Sam is hovering over her. His hands are opening the vest and she can breathe a little easier. He tells her to lie back, don't move. When he gets up to control the scene his hand grabs hers for a moment and trails away.

She thinks she says that she's fine over hundred times that day. The detective tells her that's normal. Andy can't remember the detective's name when she walks out of the trailer. But Sam is there, and that seems right.

His hand is on her arm and he's pulling her around the communication trailer. His hands are urgent on her face, in her hair. His eyes are bouncing around her features. Reassuring himself that she's okay. She's alive. He looks like he wants to kiss her and she knows she wouldn't push him away.

She thinks they, both of them, have too many close calls.

In the weeks and months following the shooting she learns new things, and she finds trouble a lot more than she used to.

The detective from the shooting, Jo, is Luke's ex partner/girlfriend/almost-fiancé. She tries to play nice, for Luke, but there's always an undercurrent of tension between her and Jo. Jo tells her one day that she holds the things she loves in a death grip…never lets them go. Andy doesn't understand that kind of love, but thinks of Luke and the job and her dad and Sam. She can relate.

Luke gets shot and instead of helping him, she seems to annoy him. She tries not to notice how Jo is more of a healing presence than she is. She wonders why she's not as mad about that as she should be.

She goes undercover, a lot, and has a gun pointed at her, again. She follows a distraught wife into a burned out laundry-matt and the building collapses around them, trapping them inside with the dead husband. She and Traci are almost responsible for ruining an entire sting operation. And she helps a struggling victim reconnect with her daughter. She does her job.

Through all of this, though, Sam is a constant. He is always there. And it's this she thinks about when she finds out that Luke cheated on her. She goes to him and of course he already knows. Everybody knew before she did. She wonders if anybody was going to tell her. Decides it doesn't matter any more. It's done.

They sit on his floor in front of his couch, drinking his imported Budweiser, talking. By the end of the night she's tipsy and when she leans her head on his shoulder, the world spins around them. In the beer-induced haze she thinks it's much easier without the weight of Luke between them. Then feels guilty, she did love Luke…just not enough.

When Sam picks her up off the floor and carries her into the bedroom, she thinks about kissing him again. But decides that the beer and the circumstances would cheapen it.

_One day…soon_, she thinks as she drifts off wrapped in his blankets.

She watches Jo seamlessly take her place and finds that she isn't bothered by it. She can work a case with Jo, as colleagues if not friends, because she isn't the enemy. She never was. She thinks they were both taking the time to find out what was right and that timing just happened to overlap. Maybe, probably, it was a good thing.

She grows closer with her fellow rookies, even Gail. And she grows up on the force. She's no longer seen as the rookie who busted an undercover cop on her first. She's an equal. She's a copper.

She gets paired with Oliver and Williams a lot. She learns that Oliver likes to take it easy, let the crime come to him, doesn't like to work too hard. That's not saying that he is lazy, just more of a laid back kind of guy.

Williams is the opposite. She's out on the street, looking for guys to bust. She might have to chase them down, but she'll get her man. Andy thinks Noelle is always trying to prove that a woman can do this job and she respects that. Tries to live up to Noelle's example.

They send her out with Sam a lot, too, and she wonders if they think he's less likely to go crazy when she gets into trouble because he'll be the first one there when it does. Or maybe they think he'll keep her out of trouble. It hasn't worked up 'til now, but they say there's a first time for everything.

And there is. The first time with Sam is more like a continuation of that long ago night, only less rushed. There's no need to rush. There's nobody else, just the two of them.

So when he takes his time exploring her with his hands and his tongue and his teeth, she can't blame him. And when he gasps her name as she takes him in, like he can't believe this is real, she takes the time to show him.

And in the morning, when she wakes up before him, she doesn't run out the door if she feels a little vulnerable. She watches him sleep instead, traces the lines in his face with her finger tip until his eyes open and he smiles at her.


End file.
